Loving You Always (4 page)

Kerris watched him pat his jeans again and then walk back into the living room, searching for his phone. Kerris held it up.

“Looking for this?” She leaked anger in her tone, saving the hurt for later.

A look of relief washed over his face.

“Yeah, I was. The day was so crazy I just realized I didn’t have it.” He extended his hand, palm open. When she held on to the phone, Cam frowned. “Ker, my phone.”

“Why?” Kerris willed her voice not to wobble. “Afraid I’ll see something I shouldn’t? Like a message from your friend?”

His dark brows jerked together over confused eyes that might have convinced her before, but not anymore.

“Who?”

Kerris turned the phone around, making sure he got the eyeful that had been intended for him. Cam scanned the screen and then rolled his eyes.

“Baby, that’s just some girl from the office. She’s a piece of work. Sorry you had to see that, but I barely know her.”

He wiggled his fingers for the phone, but Kerris wasn’t ready to release the evidence.

“Really, Cam?” Kerris threaded her voice with disdain. “You think I’m buying that?”

“I know how it must look, but I promise you I haven’t done anything with that chick.” Cam ran his long fingers through the dark hair spilling around his ears. “Not ’cause she hasn’t tried. Geesh, she’s persistent. I’ll make sure she doesn’t pull a stunt like that again.”

“A stunt?” Kerris scoffed, a disbelieving whoosh of air escaping from her chest. “The only stunt is the one you’re trying to pull on me right now.”

Cam’s eyes flinted and the muscle in his lean jaw flexed.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Why should I?”

“Maybe because when I saw you with my
own eyes
kissing my best friend I stayed. I chose to trust you when you said it wouldn’t happen again.” Cam dropped his hand, clenching it at his side. “Scroll through the history and see all the messages I’ve exchanged with her.”

Kerris glanced down at the phone, rolling her thumb over the screen to pull down other messages.

Nothing. Just the picture she had sent to Cam right before he’d walked in the door.

“You could have deleted them.”

“What’s her name?”

“What?”

“What’s her name?” Cam gestured to the phone. “Is she saved as a contact in my phone, or is it just some random number and a set of fake tits?”

Kerris, a sick feeling roiling her stomach, looked back at the phone. No name. Just a number. Maybe…

“Cam, I—”

“I swear on my baby growing inside you that I didn’t cheat with that girl, or anybody else, since the day you married me.” Cam snatched the phone and slid it into his back pocket. “Tell me you see the irony here. I had a lot more reason not to trust you than you had, and yet here we are. You accusing me of cheating.”

“Cam, what was I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know.” Cam shrugged broad shoulders under his cotton button-up. “That my vows actually mean something to me.”

“That’s not fair. They mean something to me, too.”

“Apparently, they mean something different to you.” A bitter laugh shoved its way past Cam’s lips. “The crazy thing is everybody thought you were the good girl marrying the bad boy. Poor Kerris. Cam won’t stay faithful, when all along you were the cheat.”

His words, so close to the ache she’d felt earlier, missing Walsh, sawed at her heart.

“Don’t.” Her whisper begged him to stop, even though she knew Cam well enough to know he wouldn’t. “You know I’d never cheat on you.”

“You mean you’d never fuck Walsh.” Cam’s beautiful face twisted into something as close to ugly as it could ever come. “Doesn’t mean you don’t cheat, and it’s sad that for a while I was willing to settle for that. Not anymore. Maybe I don’t deserve a girl who loves me, but I’d rather be alone than in a marriage with two other people.”

“I thought we were past this.” Kerris swallowed the regret and shame crawling up her throat. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have confronted you that way—”

“Oh, I know exactly why you shot first and asked questions later.” Cam’s expression calcified. “You were looking for a way out.”

“No.” Kerris gestured to her swollen belly. “I’m pregnant. You think I’d want something like that to happen?”

“Either way, you got it. I’m done. I can’t do this anymore, Ker.”

“You’re giving up?” Desperation choked the breath from Kerris’s lungs. Every word out of Cam’s mouth stabbed a hole in the dream she was this close to having—a family. “We haven’t really tried.”

“Haven’t tried? What do you think this has been?”

“I mean really tried. Like talk to someone. Maybe go to counseling.”

“Counseling?” Cam went still and stiff. “You know I don’t do shrinks.”

“I was thinking more a marriage counselor.” Kerris took a step in Cam’s direction, softening her voice for the next words. “And maybe they could recommend someone for you.”

“For me?” Wariness shuttered Cam’s face and slitted his eyes. “I don’t need a counselor.”

“Cam, your nightmares have only gotten worse and you’re barely sleeping.”

Cam pointed one long finger in her direction. “Holy fuck! You got some nerve turning this back on me. I don’t need a
counselor
. I’m not the one fighting to stay in a marriage I don’t even want.”

“That’s not true.”

“What do you want, Kerris?”

“I…well…I want you and…this baby, of course.”

“Of course you do.” Cam swaddled the words in sarcasm. “Don’t make me out to be the head case when you’re in love with two guys.”

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You’re not in love with two guys. Just one.” Cam strode to the door, launching his next words over his shoulder like a torpedo. “Too bad he’s not your husband.

He slammed the door behind him.

So sad, so familiar, a door closing. Gone. For a moment, after the violence of their raised voices, Kerris welcomed the silence, but then it throbbed and thickened around her. Swelled in the cottage, lonely and desolate.

Not an affair. Some set of fake tits Cam had called her. That girl meant absolutely nothing to Cam. Echoes of his accusations stung her ears. He was right. She was the cheat because Walsh did mean something to her. In another life, he would have been the air she breathed. In this one, he was the magnificent thorn piercing her side, tempting her to go against the grain of what she knew was right. She was culpable, responsible for all of the convolutions in this marriage. For the circuitous hurt she continued to do to Cam, even when her intentions were the best.

Moving like an old woman, she shuffled into her bedroom and lay on the bed. She didn’t bother removing the kimono, but just slipped under the covers and went to sleep.

“Kerris!”

“Walsh,” she muttered, still clawing her way out of the dream. She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes and pulling the kimono close around her neck.

“What’d you just call me?” Cam stood in the semidark, the lamp illuminating the mounting rage on his face.

“Cam! Oh, gosh. No. No, it’s not…not—” she sputtered, still blinking heavy sleep from her eyes.

“In your sleep!” Cam chopped a stiff hand through the air and leaned down until their noses almost touched. “And you have the nerve to accuse me of cheating? When you lie down beside me every night and dream about
him
?”

His hot, alcohol-soaked breath fanned her face. words were not crisp, but slurred, slopping around in his mouth, crowded out by anger and outrage.

“Cam, you’ve been drinking.” With false calm, she reached up to touch his face, wiping at the dampness on his forehead. “It’s been a volatile night for us both. Let’s talk about this tomorrow when we’re both in our right minds.”

Cam pushed her hand away.

“Oh, I’m finally in my right mind. I came back to talk things through. Give it one more chance, at least for the baby’s sake, but I had it right the first time. I’m done.”

He strode to the door, not looking back. The last she heard of him was the slamming door. Again. A tired déjà vu of earlier tonight. Of so many slammed doors and violent departures over the course of her life.

She sat for a moment just as he’d left her, blinking in the dim light and rubbing at arms chilled from the air conditioning. Chilled from the finality of his parting words. And then it hit her. Cam had been drinking. He was angry. He was driving away. She had to stop him.

She scrambled out of the bed, not even bothering to throw on shoes. She snatched her keys and her purse and dashed toward her Camry, realizing it was raining only when she slid on the wet cobblestones.

She pulled out onto the road, training her eyes on the taillights of the Land Rover ahead of her. She struggled to remain calm. Cam was still within sight. Irrational as it was, she felt that as long as she kept him within sight, she could protect him. She could at least be there if a cop stopped him. She rubbed her stomach and pressed the accelerator as much as she dared, needing to get a little closer.

“Hold on, little one.”

The rain came down harder now, faster than her decrepit wipers could keep pace. She squinted through the sheets of rain pummeling her windshield before finally turning her bright lights on. She grabbed her phone, glancing down to select Cam’s contact. The phone rang several times before finally rolling into voice mail.

She tossed her phone back into her purse, setting a grate over the fear and panic that burned in her belly and throat.

“Cameron Mitchell, when this is all over, I’m gonna kill you.”

Cam veered sharply to the left, avoiding something in the road. Kerris pulled her steering wheel to avoid it, too, but she immediately felt her tires spinning free of the road; she could feel the unresponsive steering wheel sliding through her hands as she spun once and then again and then again and then again. There was no last thought when she cannoned toward the tree with its menacing limbs. All thoughts were drowned out by the scream that erupted from her throat, filling the car before it dissolved into the deathly silence that remained.

K
erris is in the hospital!”

Meredith rubbed her eyes, struggling to drag herself from the warmth of her down comforter and a deep sleep.

“Cam?” She ran her hands through her tuft of spiky hair, her voice sleep-slurred. “Is that you?”

“Yes. Yes.” His words popped out between panicked breaths. “Did you hear me? Kerris is in the hospital. It’s all my fault, Mer. Oh, God!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Meredith sat up, reaching beside the bed to snap on the lamp. “What are you saying?”

“She’s in the hospital. Rivermont General.”

“What happened?” Fear squeezed the muscles of her throat, barely letting the words out.

“She was…she was coming after me.” Cam’s voice broke over the last word.

“I don’t understand.” Meredith frowned and threw the covers back. She rushed toward her closet, grabbing the first pair of jeans she reached, pulling them on under her nightshirt and not even bothering with a bra.

“We had a—” Cam stopped, pausing to draw a shallow, anxious breath. “We had a fight, and I had been drinking. I drove out, and she came after me.”

Meredith paused in pulling on her Uggs, longing to dive through the phone and squish the life from Cam.

“You sorry piece of shit.” Meredith snatched up her bag and keys, bolting from the apartment.

“I know.” Cam groaned, his voice holding all the torture she hoped he was feeling. “I know. Just…just come.”

“Oh, don’t you worry.” She slammed her car door, looking over her shoulder to zip out of the parking lot. “I’m on my way.”

Twenty minutes later, she almost felt sorry that she had been so hard on Cam when she saw him slumped in the plastic chair, head flopping into his hands, anguish in every line of his body.

“Cam.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “Talk to me.”

He raised his head, eyes already red-rimmed and swollen from tears.

“She…she…it’s bad.”

“Where is she?” Meredith hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. She’d never seen Cam like this. Even when Kristeene Bennett died, his eyes hadn’t held this kind of despondency.

“She’s in surgery.” He ran a trembling hand through his tumble of dark hair.

“Surgery?” Meredith gulped, afraid to ask the question. “And the baby?”

“They’re doing an emergency C-section now.” Defeat weighted his shoulders. “Our chances aren’t very good.”

“Not very good? For Kerris? For the baby?”

“For either of them.” He dropped his head back into his hands. “Oh, God, Meredith. What if they don’t make it?”

Meredith’s heart pounded in her chest so hard it hurt, like she couldn’t draw breath fast or deep enough. This was when Kerris’s mother should have been here to pray and believe with a mother’s defiant faith. But Kerris didn’t have that, and Meredith felt her absence.

“Cam, have you called Mama Jess?”

“No.” Cam sniffed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “I didn’t…I don’t have her number.”

Meredith pulled her phone from her purse and searched her contacts. “Dammit.”

“What?” Cam raised his head again to peer at her through the hair drooping in his eyes.

“I don’t have her number either.” She sucked her teeth in frustration. “How is that even possible?”

“You think it’ll be in Kerris’s phone?”

“I’m sure it would be.” She clicked through her contacts once more, even though she knew it was pointless.

“I have her purse.” Cam reached behind the chair to pass the bag Meredith recognized immediately as Kerris’s. “The cops gave it to me.”

She grabbed it, rifling through the contents until she found Kerris’s phone. She scrolled down to find Mama Jess’s number, pausing over another contact along the way. Trisha McAvery. She recognized the name. Kerris had told her Walsh’s assistant, Trisha McAvery, admired her bracelet and was taking it to a friend in New York who might be interested in buying.

She called Mama Jess, providing the few details she could before urging the older woman to come. Meredith glanced up at Cam, head still in his hand, foot tapping a restless rhythm on the waiting room floor. Meredith stalked around the corner and down to the ladies’ restroom, slipping into the handicapped stall. She started dialing, letting the door slam shut behind her. After three rings, Meredith was about to hang up or hope for a voice mail.

“Hello?” a sleep-heavy voice asked from the other end. “Kerris?”

Trisha must have Kerris programmed in her phone, too.

“No, this is actually Kerris’s best friend, Meredith.”

“Do you have any idea what time it is, Meredith? It’s freaking two o’clock in the morning.”

“Sorry about that.” Meredith bit her lip, hoping this wasn’t crazy. “I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t an emergency. And Walsh’s number isn’t in Kerris’s phone.”

There was a loaded silence before she heard Trisha speak again, her tone more alert.

“Has something happened to Kerris, Meredith?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, God. Is she okay?”

“No.”

“Is she alive?”

“She is, but it’s bad.” Meredith swiped at an errant tear. “I thought…well, she and Walsh…they’re—”

“Yes, I understand and you’re right.” It sounded like Trisha was now in motion. “Walsh would want to know. Tell me everything.”

Three bangs on his door. Insistent. Successive.

Walsh creaked his eyes open, sat up, and glanced around his bedroom, struggling to orient himself. He’d been in negotiations with Sheikh Kassim all day about a possible merger, and well into the night. Walsh glanced at the watch on his wrist. He’d been asleep for only an hour or so.

The banging came again. Whoever stood on the other side of that door should prepare for his sleep-deprived wrath. Walsh dragged on pajama bottoms, grumbling and stumbling his way to the door.

“Who the hell is it?”

“It’s Trisha.”

Walsh swung the door open and narrowed his eyes on his assistant, standing in the hallway outside his apartment.

“Trisha, this better be good.”

“I need to tell you something.”

“In the middle of the night?” He stepped back to allow her inside.

She stepped into the modern luxury of his apartment. She’d been there only a few times, usually to drop something off from the office. She eyed the large black-and-white photo of his mother hanging over his fireplace. She pressed her eyes shut for a moment before opening them to meet his stare.

“Out with it, Trish.”

“When I first started working for you, you gave me a short list of people. You said to find you if they ever needed you, no matter what.”

Walsh’s eyes slitted and his body tightened. If anything had happened to anyone on that list, he’d lose it.

“What’s this about?”

“It’s Kerris.”

The words landed in his chest like a meteor, cratering his composure and stealing his air. He couldn’t form the question. Her answer could decimate him. He relished the last few seconds of not knowing for sure. He looked at Trish with a steady, waiting intensity.

“There’s been an accident.”

“No.”

“Yes, Walsh she—”

“Do
not
say she’s dead.” He shook his head and swallowed convulsively. “Don’t tell me that.”

“No, Walsh,” she rushed to correct. “But she’s badly injured.”

“How do you know?”

“Her friend Meredith called me.”

He leaned against the wall, propping his head against it and holding her eyes.

“What happened?”

“A car accident.”

“But she’s alive? And the baby?”

“It doesn’t look good…for either of them.”

“No, I don’t believe that. She’s strong.”

“Walsh, her car hydroplaned and slammed into a tree.”

“Oh, God.” He slid to the floor, sitting with his back to the wall and his elbows on his knees. His head fell between his arms, his hand reaching behind his neck to grip it as if holding on for dear life.

“She’s in surgery now. They’re performing an emergency C-section trying to save the baby.”

Walsh’s head snapped up, eyes pinning Trisha to the spot.

“What about Kerris?”

Trisha squatted, resting on her haunches, clasping her hands dangling between her knees. “She has internal injuries. Her window shattered, and a limb from the tree pierced her side.”

Walsh moaned, a shudder shredding through his chest. He sprang to his feet and strode back to his bedroom.

“You said Meredith called you, right?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Send me her contact. I need to get to Rivermont like an hour ago.”

“Your father has the Bennett jet, but I’ll check on the next available flight.” She stopped at the entrance to his bedroom, watching him stuff clothes haphazardly into his Louis Vuitton carryall.

“I’ll call Sheikh Kassim.” Walsh trimmed his voice of everything but determination. “He has a private jet. I want it ready to go within the hour.”

“Walsh, do you have any idea what time it is? I know you’re anxious to get there, but you can’t just wake a sheikh up at this hour and expect him to jump through hoops for you.”

He reached for his cell phone on his bedside table without sparing Trisha a glance.

“Watch me.”

Walsh clenched his jaw, faltering for a moment. Standing still as he fought against the mess of emotions flooding him. Kerris had bisected his life into two chunks. Before her and after her. Even though he wasn’t allowed into her life, she was everything. If he thought too long about a world where she no longer existed, he’d dissolve.

“I just…” Whatever was in his eyes, he didn’t try to hide it from Trisha when he finally looked at her. “I just need to get there.”

She walked further into the room and grabbed the phone from him.

“You finish packing. I’ll call him myself.”